Ping
by Strop
Summary: Alternative Title: That One Game With the Balls and the Panels, OR How Wheatley Engaged in Blatant Plagiarism to Create A Fundamentally Identical Version of Pong and Claim It as His Own.


Do you have any idea how difficult it is to make a game of _Pong_ seem intense? The answer is a) VERY.

* * *

One day-

Well, it wasn't really a _day_, per se, because as far as She was concerned there was no need to allow testing to slow for something as human and irrelevant as circadian rhythms, and the lights were all on all the time anyways, because what was the point of being in complete control of a highly advanced scientific facility if you didn't ensure that it was operating at maximum output at all times?

Currently, there _was _no output. But there _could've _been. That was the important thing.

So really, it was more like one power-cycle, and interestingly enough, had the routine flicker of the lights in what Wheatley referred to as his 'office' been measured by someone with a more relevant concept of time, they would have found that the power fluctuated approximately once every twenty-four hours.

Not that this mattered to Wheatley. He hardly ever remained in the office, with its off-white walls and its flickering screens and the slowly shifting images of several thousand human beings lying peaceful and still in their artificial sleep. It was so _boring_, you know? Very repetitive. Not like the end of the hall was much better, which was as far as his management rail would go before it started to jam up - something caught in the rail, he thought, no problems on _his _end, really he ought to file a complaint, or he would've, if there'd been anyone to file a complaint _to_ - but at least the end of the hall had _character_, or something of the sort. If you could call a rusty, failing greyness in need of a patch job 'character.'

It was better than the off-white, at least. Near blinding, that was, and after staring at it for cycle after cycle after cycle you started to fancy that instead of hanging securely to your management rail you were, in fact, floating in some sort of unnatural void, accompanied only by dust and the occasional puff of static. Those were the points when the panic set in, and he would be forced to slide quickly up and down the hall, running several rounds on the rail before the feeling wore off. In humans, this was something known as going stir-crazy, but he wasn't to know that.

What he _did _know was this: one power cycle, he had an idea.

Not a particularly shocking development, considering that it was his job - or had been, before they'd promoted him. At least, they'd called it a promotion. Really, he figured, anything that got him well away from _Her _and Her awful voice was a promotion of some sort.

Now, his job was less along the lines of thinking and more along the lines of watching, though the presence of the second did nothing to negate the existence of the first. If anything, the second had only _advanced _the first, given that when the things you are meant to be watching engage in about as much activity as a comatose slug - he wasn't sure what a slug _was, _not _exactly_, but somewhere in his reference files there was a photograph that seemed distinctly sluggish, and so he went with that - there isn't much more to do than lie around thinking.

Thinking, and talking.

Sometimes he liked to pick out people on the screen, and imagine that they were, in fact, awake and only resting their eyes for a brief moment, and that they could hear and fully appreciate every word that came out of his tinny little vocal units.

"Hello," he would start. Very simple. Nice and polite. Never forget your greetings.

"I'd say good morning, but, you know, haven't really got mornings down here, have we - I could play a file, or something, probably got some birdsong lying around here somewhere, maybe some inspirational sunsets - no, sorry, sunrises, _that's _mornings, sunsets is the other thing - though really, what's so inspirational about watching a big flaming ball of gas come roaring up into the sky? Sounds more of a terrifying concept, honestly - should really have a word with the man who came up with that one. Or woman, I mean, all about equal opportunities, you know, have a word with the person of whatever gender who decided that hey, let's start the day with fire in the sky! Not that I've ever _seen _a real sunrise, but I've got the files, yeah? Lots of nice reference images, couple of videos. No sound files, which got me wondering, _does _a sunrise make a sound? Because if it did I'm imagining - and you can correct me if I'm wrong here, this is all just a hypothesis, you understand - this sort of slow rumble, and then from there-"

Greetings could take up anywhere from thirty minutes to an hour. After that, it was free reign on subject matter.

"So I've been thinking," he said one day, to a slightly balding middle-aged man who had been locked into sleep with an expression on his face that made one think of lemons. "I've been thinking - and yes, I know, what a bloody _shocker _that is, me, thinking, but it keeps you busy, you know? Not much else to do, other than think, unless you enjoy staring at walls. I don't, personally, not really my thing, walls, but to each their own, you know. Not a judgemental person, me. But I've been thinking, what if-"

And at this point his voice took on a tone of absolute glee.

"-what _if _I came up with some sort of game to pass the time? And I don't mean something stupid like, watch-how-many-times-this-bit-of-lint-goes-flying-between-one panel-and-another-before-it-croaks, sort of thing. I mean like, a _real _mind-bender, and I've got a few ideas already, like, involving panels and this sort of _ball_, and you've got to knock it back and forth, and I'm not really sure where it goes from there - maybe I'll install a sort of rudimentary point system, although really, don't see the, well, the point, if I'm just going to be playing against myself. Would try plugging into the main system, see if there's anything in there that's a potential sort of opponent, but, you know, part one, stuck up here on this rail, and part two, they sort of told me I would _die _if I ever tried plugging myself into the main system, like, actually _die_, with all the sparky bits going all over the place and everything, which _sounds _like it'd look interesting from a spectator's point of view, but I can assure you it'd probably be quite painful on the other end, most likely, actually."

Another thing Wheatley did not know: the game he had in mind had already been created a several centuries earlier by a man with initials like a battery, and was an immediate commercial success. It had also been invented by several other people around the world at various points in time, all who thought it was completely original and highly profitable and didn't know the first thing about computers. Some of them, anyways.

In Wheatley's case, the only criteria which didn't apply was the one involving profit, which robots have no concept of, as they do not require currency. On the other hand, it might have been odd that he, being a computer himself, would have no knowledge of other computers, but this was not strictly true. Wheatley didn't know the first thing about computers, but he knew the second, fourth, and possibly twenty-third if he thought _really _hard about it.

"-and it needs a name, too, doesn't it, because I can't just go around calling it 'That One Game With the Ball and the Panels,' because for one thing it just sounds so _vague_, could be any number of things involving balls and panels in this place, and for another it's a bit of a mouthful, isn't it? 'That One Game With the Ball and the Panels.' Lots of words in there. Too many, I should think. So, let's see, needs something short, preferably easy to remember, won't muddle the backup drives when I try to save it - that _is _what a backup drive does, isn't it? - some sort of _noise_? That no-mat-pea thing, was it? When you've got a word that sounds like, well, a _sound_. You know."

He made a series of noises, beginning with whistles and assorted electronic whirring, ending with a bright _ping_ that came out like a submarine sonar, reverberating off the walls. Had he possessed eyebrows to raise, Wheatley would've raised them.

"Didn't even know I could make that noise. Funny, isn't it." Just for the sake of consistency, he made it again. "_Lord_, I don't even know how I'm doing that! But it's nice, isn't it, might even work out - Ping, how does that sound? I mean, wouldn't make much sense unless the ball made that specific sound when it hit the panels, but we can work that in at some point, somehow, sort of, ish. Can't really run sound in here, but you know, the wonders of the imagination, or something of the sort. Pretend it's making that noise. Make the noise while I'm playing, just, every time it hits the wall, just-"

He made the sound a third time.

"Brilliant!"

It took him six and a half months, which, while arguably faster than the speed at which the original had been made, was a laughable pace for a machine of his presumable advancement. _She _could have done it in maybe a minute, but She wouldn't have been interested in this sort of thing anyways. The only thing that was ever on Her mind was Testing. Although, he thought, it wasn't as though she was doing much of that now. There'd been more before, but she'd run out of subjects - sort of. They all died too quickly, was what he'd heard. She didn't _tell _him, not directly - if anything, She appeared to go out of her way to keep communication to the barest of minimums, which meant none at all - but you tended to pick things up, on the wireless, which consisted mostly of Her indomitable presence, spitting out precisely-calculated orders and formulae which he couldn't begin to understand even in his wildest dreams, providing he'd had any.

This was when the second idea came creeping in through the corners.

He was terrified, obviously, but had to admit that it _was _tempting. Playing the game against himself had become boring after about two weeks. It might have taken longer, except for the fact that he couldn't figure out whether he was winning or losing, which was just plain frustrating.

Luckily for him, he didn't have to do anything. _She _came to _him_.

"_What,_" She said, Her voice frigid and filling every corner of the room, "_do you think you are doing?" _Wheatley felt one of his resistors beginning to overheat from the stress of simply being in Her presence.

"Well, you see, I got bored, see, and I thought, hey, let's make this sort of game, and maybe-"

"_Maybe _what?_ Did you think it would get you _noticed_?"_

"Well, it sort of _did_, didn't it, now that you're here, with me, talking, and, um, that wasn't really the point, honestly, I _was _just bored, thought, oh, let's make a game with a couple of panels and a ball, and you can bounce it back and forth because it's simple but people always seem to find that sort of thing enjoyable, I suppose, I mean, I know about tennis, there's a file in here for some _baffling_ reason-"

"_Shut up," _She said.

He did.

"_Normally I wouldn't even bother with something as insignificant as this, but I'm in the middle of initiating some _very _important testing procedures, and your little...game is disrupting my calculations."_

"Is it the noise?" asked Wheatley nervously. "Because I can turn that off, you know. If it's bothering you, I mean. Disrupting the testing calculations. All that."

"_No_," She sighed. _"Really, I think it would be better for all of us if you just reached back into those files of yours and...deleted it._"

And he nearly did; he felt her presence reaching into his circuitry and _willing _him to push that big, red, metaphorical button that would send the precious files right into static oblivion. But then: "_Delete _it? No, no, _no_! I spent _months_ on this! This is my life's work, practically, I mean, if I had a life, you can't just-"

"_Can't just _what?"

"Well, let's be - let's be reasonable about this, all right? I mean, what if I swore not to make any more games? No more pinging, no more electronic tennis, no nothing, no - look, if I'm-" He stuttered to a halt. "If _you're _going to make me get rid of it, couldn't we, you know, do a test run? Game, set, fire? Or was it match? Something along those lines, but, anyways, as I was saying, gets horribly tedious, playing against myself all the time, you know, because I'll win but then, since the other guy's also me, I'll lose, which gets right confusing, you know? So I figure, what if, maybe, we make a deal, like, you beat me, I'll get rid of it; I beat you, it stays?"

She was silent. Finally, She said, with what must have been all the derision Her circuits could muster - She might have even installed a new program simply to attain those higher levels - _"You want _me _to play _you _in a _game_?" _

"Er," said Wheatley. "Yes?" He paused. "I mean, it's not like you've got anything better to do - no offense to testing, of course, nothing wrong with testing, 'On with the tests!', I say - but it'd only take a few minutes or so, probably, depending, I mean, I've been practicing a lot, gotten quite good, barely take up any of your precious time, on my honor-"

She let out a noise that might have almost been a sigh.

"_All right_," She said. _"I'll humor you. And who knows, maybe I'll even let you keep it if you win." _

He plugged himself into the nearest ceiling port and booted it up on a secondary system. The layout, he thought - black screen, white bars - was nice and minimalistic. All the rage these days, minimalism, or so the laboratory layouts would have you believe, and it was nice to stick with the times. You wouldn't get anywhere with outdated software, after all, though arguably Wheatley himself had been outdated for the past several decades. Not that it was of any importance. His intelligence wouldn't have suffered any improvement for it anyways.

"So, uh, shall we-"

"_I don't have time for you to waste any more of it with your pointless prattle. Start the game." _

The first point was Hers. So were the second and third. She nearly got the fourth, but Wheatley managed to slip the ball past her after uttering a particularly loud, resonant, and downright distracting _ping_. It was difficult, he thought, to make this sort of thing seem, well, _intense_. Admittedly, the stakes weren't particularly high, and he could always reprogram the game if he really wanted to, but somewhere deep down he knew that it wouldn't be the same. It wouldn't be the _first_. The first was special. You couldn't replicate that no matter how accurate your parsing was.

What they really needed, he though, was something to set the mood. He dug around in his sound files for a few quarters of a second, allowing Her another point, but found what he was looking for. Game, set.

"_Are you playing _Vivaldi_?" _She demanded, and Wheatley's score bumped up by one.

"For atmosphere, yeah. Do you, er, mind?"

"_Absolutely not_," She said, in the tone of voice that said She minded very much indeed and would like nothing better than to resurrect the long-dead composer and subject him to every potentially deadly testing procedure ever created, and then some new ones designed especially for the occasion.

"Oh, good."

By the end of the first twenty bars, their scores were tied at nine to nine. Wheatley had programmed the game to stop at ten. He could hear Her silently fuming through the system.

"_This is ridiculous_," She spluttered. _"These sorts of basic calculations should be insignificant for someone of my computational power. There's no way a moron like you should be able to keep up with me." _

"Could, I, um, venture a suggestion here? Nothing big, just a sort of theory I've been thinking about while we've been going at this - which has been _really _enjoyable, by the way, just so you don't, you know, feel bad or anything - that maybe you're having a hard time _because _it's so simple?"

"_What are you implying?"_

"Well, you spend _all _this time running this big, _massive _machine, all these big old programs doing big old, um, program things. Maybe you've just forgotten how the little ones work?"

"_That has got to be the most _ridiculous _theory I have ever-_"

_Ping._

Game, set, fire.

"_You _didn't."

"I _did_," said Wheatley gleefully. He didn't think he'd ever won anything in his life, except for that one occasion when a group of scientists had decided to band together and award him, 'Most Likely to Become a Paperweight," which he'd thought was quite a fine thing to aspire to, really. Right useful, paperweights, always making sure your important documents didn't blow away in a chemically-generated laboratory wind. "This was fun, you know," he continued, trying to sound more cheerful than usual, if only for Her sake. "I mean, this was _really _fun, and here I was thinking I didn't even have a proper concept of what fun was, but honestly, if I had to develop one starting _right now_, this would be my base line." He paused. "So, I, er, get to keep it now, don't I?"

His head filled with a long rush of static, and then what felt like the longest silence he had ever witnessed, which was saying something. Then:

"_Yes_."

"What? _Yes_? Oh, that's brilliant! You won't regret this, by the way. _Excellent _decision on your part, if you don't mind me saying so, really stellar example of superior personnel management skills-"

But She was already gone, leaving behind nothing but the lingering residue of an electronic sneer in her wake.

_Ping._

Game, set.

Wheatley's eye curved upward into something that might've been a smile.


End file.
